The Agrinautica

   I have a new job. Today I interviewed at Alex's mom's firm, Hughes & Sullivan, for a position as Court Assistant, and was given the position. I will start on Wednesday (the soonest drug test results are expected back), at $14 an hour.

   I stopped by the Bee Cave on my way back to thank them for employing me this week, and got a paycheck for $350 for my three days of work ($15 an hour) which you will recall I mostly spent playing pingpong and watching the whiskey still.

   Hughes & Sullivan has 15 attorneys (three senior partners, of which Alex's parents are two (the other is Sullivan obviously)), and 28 employees overall. I will be making sure all the case files are in order every morning for the days adventures, and spending most of the time at court helping the attorneys in various ways. I am very excited, it sounds like I will be quite emersed in the front-lines of legal activity.


   Additionally, in about an hour and a half I pick Kristy up from the train station. Today is an excellent day.

   Last Sunday (the 28th) I hitched a ride with Phi Alpha Delta UCI up to UCLA where we met up with the Phi Alpha Delta chapters from UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UCR, USC, Cal State Northridge and Mt St Marie College (also present of course was UCI and I represented UCD). The occasion was an interchapter PhAD bbq hosted by UCLA. It was quite pleasant.

   Snuck away for a short bit in the middle to meet up with the Chief Justice of the UCLA student government and talk to him about court stuff, because I am a huge nerd like that.


   Sunday evening Kristy passed through Mission Viejo returning from Sashieland (with Sashie) and I hitched a ride with them on down to San Diego. I hung out down there until Wednesday, whereupon I took the train back.

   Friday (yesterday) I returned to work at Bee Busters, which I'm going to do about twice a week now until I find a job. Boss Dave: "Kris, your hand-eye coordination could use some work, I'm assigning you to play some pingpong." Dave, Technician Bob and I spent about half the day lollygagging about HQ, playing pingpong and procrastinating making wine, and then Bob and I got some calls.
   Last night I hung out with my good friend Alex and some friends of hers.

   I finally put up a number of pictures from work that I took over the summer (and hadn't gotten around to putting up until now).

   For example, here is what our HQ, the Bee Cave, looks like:

   Other notable recently added pictures include: a rather scary job; the beemobile speeds through Orange County; Ryan showcases some basic bee busting equipment; and more!



see all 11 pictures uploaded today

   So the facebook management has recognized the alarm expressed by many over their new news feed feature, and I am very relieved that they didn't gun it, because I think its pretty awesome. Its like a friends-list for facebook.
   Anyway, all of you who are so alarmed by your friends knowing what you're doing on facebook, what is it you all have to hide? Terrorists all of you!! I kid I kid (but not about it being awesome).
   It finally makes this "social networking" thing relevant. Whereas before if one wanted to know what a friend was up to they'd have to scrutinize their page for things that were different since last time they scrutinized it ... which is kind of creepy if not way too time consuming for anyone without an unhealthy obsession to actually do. Now however, one can easily glance at the news feed of what their friends are up to.
   Concerned about having everyone and their brother updated on what you're doing? Maybe you shouldn't have "friended" everyone and a half!!


   In other news, I have determined that this is the most awesome video ever.


   Also, this is the most fucked up tale of slutbaggery ever.


   In bee related news, our competitors continue to drop like flies, with a competitor company calling us last week to proposition us to buy them out. Not in any hurry however, Dave's postponing meeting with their owner for a two day fishing trip down in San Diego


   And speaking of San Diego, I'll be heading down there this evening to hang out with my favourite Kristy & co.

Bob, going up

   When Boss Dave originally bought his current 16 ft boat, the salesperson gave him attitude saying he wouldn't be able to afford it. Dave pulled a cashier's check for $27,000 (the cost of the boat) in front of the salesperson and said "see this, you just lost yourself a sale" and bought it from someone else. He's not the kind of guy who looks as wealthy as he is.
   When the boat needed servicing though, he went back to the first place since it was the closest, but they refused to do anything for him on account of, well, thinking he was an ass.
   So Dave called the boat manufacturer (Boston Whaler) to report that one of their liscensed dealers was refusing him service. Later that day the owner of the boat store himself called Dave asking him to bring his boat in.

   The other day Office Dave, Ryan the Elder, & Office Amy were in the boat fishing off the backside of Catalina when they were boarded by the Department of Fish & Game.
   Now Dave had thought he had lost his fishing permit a few weeks ago so he got a new one, and then he found his old one. Amy doesn't have a fishing permit, but they figured three liscenses, three people. It should be okay.. I mean the purpose of liscenses isn't to regulate who specifically is out there, and they don't say "nontransferable" on them.
   Anyway, the DFG troopers found this entirely unacceptable, tossing the extra permit on the deck and stepping on it. Then gave Dave a misdemeanor conspiracy to commit fraud ticket or some such sauce.
   The next day Dave manages to get the head of the California Department of Fish & Game on the phone. While he maintains that the permits aren't transferrable, he vows to have the agents involved givin a firm shellacking for acting like stormtroopers.
   Dave's lawyer is optimistic that if it doesn't say nontransferable on the permit one can't be blamed for transferring it, and if the ticket is worse than $1000 Dave's gonna lawyerize them.

   "Wow there must be like... 30 or 40 bees in there!" says a guy about a colony which is making buzzing noises audible through the wall after we've irritated them. The next day another guy is looking at the bees hanging out in front of their colony in a fence and says "so, there's like a hundred more in there right?"
   I'm constantly amazed by how often people completely don't understand the scale of a bee colony. The thing probably had 5,000 bees when it moved in, and once its well established could have excess of 60,000.

   Today we got a call at a country club. "So where are the bees?" "Well I saw one over there, and then the manager saw another one over there [points at other side of building]" Are you for reals! They called us out for two bees?! We did a thorough inspection and didn't find anything.


   Back at the garage today, we found an emerald-green Cuckoo Wasp.


   Also, today the Wall Street Journal had someone riding around with boss Dave.


   Exactly seven and a half hours until Kristy should arrive!!

   Things slowed down a little bit last week, I think all the bees were fried from the heat. One morning (Thursday?) five of us (all technicians except Bobby) turned up to do a relatively simple removal in Mission Viejo. It was kind of funny to see all four trucks on one job.
   There are different levels of state liscense for pest controllers, from lowest to highest: Applicator, Field Representative, & Operator. I'm told normally the field representative runs the company and the operator almost never leaves HQ. On this job we had two Operators and two Field Representatives.
   Then we all went to the restaurant Coco's & office Amy met us there, and Dave treated us all to breakfast. It was excellent.

   The next day (Friday?) the first job on the schedule for Dave & Ryan the Elder was a fishing trip on Dave's 16ft boat in the ocean.

   Office Megan, soon to be on "Real Desperate Housewives of OC" as a daughter (shooting starts tomorrow) got a second speeding ticket in so many days in Coto de Caza. This time the officer wrote her up for her windows being too tinted and not having her liscense plate on (and thus being able to use the tollway for free) .. I think he was pissed once he ran her through the computer and realized she'd gotten a speeding ticket the day before.


   On Saturday evening my friend Nidia, her friends, & myself convoyed down to this party way down in Vista, CA, in three cars. Aaron met us there, as he'd been in San Diego that day.


Picture of the Day

I uploaded a bunch more pictures of bee busting on to flickr the other day.

   Been busy killin bees. We work 7am to 7pm 6 days a week. d=


   Today as Jeremy & I arrived at a swarm call, this painter that was working on the house saunters over to us like he's some kind of hero and proudly declares he just squirted the bees with a hose. Great so now instead of one clump of docile bees we have wet irritated bees all over the place, and a wet tree to drip all over me while I work on them, go team!
   So politely that the sauce was completely lost on him, Jeremy responds "yeah actually you just made our job a whole lot harder." To illustrate that he really missed the point the painter cheerfully adds "yeah I was about to hose them down again when you showed up" as if he deserves a medal for even thinking about it.

   So yeah, lesson of the day: please don't hose-down bees. It may amaze you to learn that they've actually adapted to being wet. It just makes the situation messy.


Jenn de la Vega's Fourth of July Farewell Party
   In other news, I finally got around to editing the pictures from Jenn de la Vega's party on the 4th.

   Alright ladies & gentlemen, it is time to have the talk. That's right, I've been meaning for awhile now to sit down and have a serious talk with you about the birds and the bees.

   You see, last summer while I spent my time killing countless small furry animals, I learned a few things about a secret order some of us like to call Hymenoptera. What I mean to say is I'm going to tell you about the bees and the other bees now.

Honey Bees - Are actually more like orange & black than yellow and black if you think about it ... and believe me I had more than enough time to think about that. If they live in a man-made box its a hive, if they've made their own nest somewhere its a feral colony. Colonies are much more prone to diseases than hive boxes (as boxes allow them nice evenly spaces straight corridors for cleaning), and so bees thoroughly benefit from their interaction with man. And yet some fascist vegans refuse to consume honey for god knows what reason.
   In what sounds like a classic science fiction story (only, its true) some mad scientist brought 26 Tanzanian queen bees to Brazil in 1957. They subsequently escaped and have created the entire "killer bee" population that has since spread up from there to the southern reaches of the United States. They really are not at all as scary as people make them out to be, just a little more defensive than more common Italian or Hawaiian bees (who spend their time riding vespas or hula dancing, respectively).
   Incidently the difference between these bees was caused by natural selection. In Europe bees were primarily cultivated by beekeepers, so the more "userfriendly" docile ones were selectively bred. In Africa, however, sustainable apiculture (beekeeping) never constituted a significant portion of the bee population -- rather, honey was harvested by destroying hives (both by humans and animals), so the colonies that survived were the "meaner" ones. So... suck it creationists.

Hornets - Some people, especially the elderly, like to refer to any wasp-like insect from a yellow-jacket to a humming-bird as a "hornet." I really don't know where they got this idea. Hornets are an endangered species in Europe, and have never been wild on the American West Coast. So seriously shut up about them. Also, I found an amazing cinematic quality video of an epic battle between hornets & honey bees, I can't believe its for reals.

Wasps - There are two main types of wasps one finds here in California (and a number of rarer types). Unfortunately the wikipedia article on them sucks so I'm going to have to go entirely from memory here. First off, if you don't know the difference between wasps and bees (and I've found an alarming number of people don't), you are in my opinion an idiot and I'm not going to take the time to explain. The two main types of wasps here though are the Golden Umbrella Wasp (Polistes Aurelius) (which is yellow and orange), and the European Paper Wasp (Polistes Dominus), which is slightly smaller and more common than the Umbrellas. Dominus wasps have sharp construction-vehicle yellow-and-black markings. The two species act essentially the same so I'll talk about them together henceforth.
   Now wasps look fricken scary, and whereas in elementry school I used to freak out my classmates by holding honeybees in my hands, I always gave wasps a very wide birth. Well it turns out they are actually the most pacifistic of the Hymenopterids I've had experience with, and will only sting you if you assault them personally. It could see you looting its nest and killing its children and if its not on the nest it'll just say "fuck that, make love not war" and go be emo.
   Funny story time: once we got this call and the lady told our fearless leader David Mardner that every time someone rang her doorbell a wasp would come sting them in the face. Knowing that wasps are not aggressive like that, David dismissed this claim as clearly the product of hyperbolic wasp hysteria. He took the call, and arriving at the house proceeded to the door and rang the doorbell. A wasp came out of nowhere and stung him him the face.
   Turns out the wasp nest was actually in the doorbell.
   Actually getting stung by a wasp is so rare that despite being employed killing them for over a year, my coworker Jeremy had never been stung by one. He once expressed an interest in actually trying to get stung by one to know how it compared to other stings (he'd been stung by everything else already). What a nut.

Bumblebees: Now bumblebees, on the other hand, are fucking flying battlestations. Fortunately one only rarely comes across their secret lairs, and I never had a bumblebee call during the summer I worked as a bee buster. Bumblebees live in colonies of a few dozen up to maybe a hundred. To quote wikipedia "Often, mature bumblebee nests will hold fewer than 50 individuals, and may be within tunnels in the ground made by other animals, or in tussocky grass."
   Jeremy once got a bumblebee call. It was on a hillside with small bushes. At first he couldn't find it, but then he stepped on a particular shrub and heard an angry buzzing sound that rapidly got louder. Suddenly a few dozen of these angry little deathstars launched out of the ground under the bush and set upon him. Bumblebees you see, can and will both bite and sting (and not die from stinging you), and are also capable of a certain degree of burrowing/tearing (I would of said they're closely related to Carpenter Bees, but Wikipedia is telling me they're no closer related than both are to honeybees, whatever they fucking look the same except Carpenter's are all black), so they'll land on your protective bee suit and start trying to burrow/tear a hole to jam their stinger in. Also I'd imagine they must have been somewhat resistent to our +3 nerve gas attack that kills other things immediately, because otherwise Jeremy would have made quick work of them. Jeremy sustained at least one sting in this encounter and he said it hurt and swelled up in a manner exponentially worse than the other stings he'd received.

Yellow Jackets: These guys are actually pretty underrated. I would have thought they were no worse than honeybees .. wrong. We get a call for yellow jackets, we call for backup. They're smaller than honeybees, so they are better able to get into any orifice they can find in your trusty bee-suit. They bite rather than sting, which just means a single one can get you about a million times more than a single bee could. Seriously, killer bee infestation: no problem -- yellow jackets: call for backup and break out the most potent chemical weapons.
   Yellowjackets are actually a type of wasp, but they look more like skinny honeybees (that are yellow and black). Interestingly, they are carnivorous. I once saw one carting away a disembodied bee head from a destroyed honeybee colony. Morbid bastards.

Mud Daubers: Are another type of wasp. They build mud nests on the underside of eaves. Apartment complexes would pay us a 100 bucks to get rid of them, we'd show up and bat them down with our hands or a broom if out of reach. These things will not sting you, and actually, like the paper wasps discussed above, are beneficial to have around, since they eat less pleasant things like spiders, and pests that are harmful to your gardens. So we've actually talked potential customers out of having us kill wasps before (since our boss Dave actually loves insects, and the rest of us, we get paid whether or not we kill shit so no need to be malicious / waste time & chemicals).


   So yeah, now you know. I actually find wasps strangely fascinating. I had two pet dead wasps named Romulus (a Dominus) & Vortigern (an Aurelius). Hey, people have butterfly collections, and no one says thats weird. I was going to try to collect a specimen of all the rarer types of wasp, but I only came up with this plan late in the season and didn't get a chance. Also I found a dead queen bee from a kill and placed it prominently in our office with a sign identifying it as "Queen Amidala."


Day 9 Pick: eazyt's entry concisely and effectively discusses a current issue relevant to the blogosphere. While it lacks in "the funny," so does this entry. And apparently a difference of opinion over the necessity of The Funny is partially responsible for the Otimus/Roter-Terror commiefascist jihad declared against me; but in my personal opinion an entry can qualify as megabloggery (& therefore 30 in 30 material) if suitably intellectual or informative.

Previously on Emosnail
   Three Years Ago Today: Ambulence Rides Are Fun - Not really. The worst part about being jumped by three wanna-be gangsters and kicked in the head while unconscious was having an IV put in my arm. Seriously. Nearly hyperventilated. I don't like needles.
   Two Years Ago Today: Delirium - RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED: I manage to thoroughly embarress myself by (1) writing a terrible paper at the last minute, (2) emailing myself the wrong version of it so that when I got to campus at the last minute I couldn't turn it in, (3) when I email the professor about this in my delirium I use the name of the author of the book I was using in place of the professor's name!! Oh man, awful. I was so shamed I friends-locked the entry, and that takes a lot.
   Year Ago Today: Making the Paper - My 30 in 30 entry got mentioned in the local paper, beat that suckers! Sure say I'm not funny all you want, lets see you get a 30 in 30 entry mentioned in the paper. (=